Ferns
The garden is full of native ferns seeding around where they will, on mossy rocks and tree stumps or in crevices in stone walls and edges where they can be extracted only with difficulty!
Although we value the contribution made by these ferns to the green and lush exuberance of the woodland garden in particular, it's to the ferns of other lands that we look to increase the horticultural interest of the collection. Ferns come in all sizes, from ground-hugging plants like the southern pan-temperate Blechnum penna-marina to our tallest non-arborescent fern, the giant Lophosoria quadripinnata from Chile, with fronds growing to 10 or 12ft. Some, Matteucia struthiopteris for example, grow upright, opening as a tight shuttlecock in spring, while others, such as the Giant Chain Fern, Woodwardia radicans, arch outwards and downwards, tip-borne plantlets rooting into the ground.
Tree ferns, of which we grow several species, produce a trunk which can grow to many feet in height, while other normally terrestrial ferns use the trunks of trees to elevate themselves. Many are evergreen, enhancing the winter scene, while others, the now rare native Osmunda regalis among them, change their greenery for yellow or russet at the onset of frost, and can be quite showy in autumn. Ferns may be merely ferns to many people, just bracken even, but the delicate lace or solid chunkiness of the fronds of many species and cultivars well repays a closer inspection.
In this context we would love to share a rather pompous quote from Abraham Stansfield, dated 1858: "The bright colours of flowers are admired by the least intellectual but the beauty of form and texture of ferns requires a higher degree of mental perception and a more cultivated intellect for its proper appreciation. Hence we regard the growing taste for the cultivation of ferns as proof of mental advancement."
For those of cultivated intellect and mental advancement, we hope to have more information on our fern collection in the future.
Although we value the contribution made by these ferns to the green and lush exuberance of the woodland garden in particular, it's to the ferns of other lands that we look to increase the horticultural interest of the collection. Ferns come in all sizes, from ground-hugging plants like the southern pan-temperate Blechnum penna-marina to our tallest non-arborescent fern, the giant Lophosoria quadripinnata from Chile, with fronds growing to 10 or 12ft. Some, Matteucia struthiopteris for example, grow upright, opening as a tight shuttlecock in spring, while others, such as the Giant Chain Fern, Woodwardia radicans, arch outwards and downwards, tip-borne plantlets rooting into the ground.
Tree ferns, of which we grow several species, produce a trunk which can grow to many feet in height, while other normally terrestrial ferns use the trunks of trees to elevate themselves. Many are evergreen, enhancing the winter scene, while others, the now rare native Osmunda regalis among them, change their greenery for yellow or russet at the onset of frost, and can be quite showy in autumn. Ferns may be merely ferns to many people, just bracken even, but the delicate lace or solid chunkiness of the fronds of many species and cultivars well repays a closer inspection.
In this context we would love to share a rather pompous quote from Abraham Stansfield, dated 1858: "The bright colours of flowers are admired by the least intellectual but the beauty of form and texture of ferns requires a higher degree of mental perception and a more cultivated intellect for its proper appreciation. Hence we regard the growing taste for the cultivation of ferns as proof of mental advancement."
For those of cultivated intellect and mental advancement, we hope to have more information on our fern collection in the future.